Policy makers and higher education researchers are considering the merits of automatic income-based repayment schemes as a way to reform programs for student loan borrowers.

Inside Higher Ed’s Michael Stratford files this report.

There is relatively broad consensus among policy makers and advocates in Washington that income-based repayment is, in most cases, a useful tool for helping borrowers manage their monthly student loan payments.

But should the federal government automatically enroll borrowers in the program as they leave school?

That’s a debate that is increasingly playing out among higher education researchers, advocates and policy makers as Congress moves toward reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

Senator Tom Harkin, who chairs the Senate education committee, said at a hearing last month that he plans to explore the issue, after two witnesses — a student aid administrator and an advocate for low-income students — disagreed about the approach.

Elsewhere, some researchers have called for a single federal income-based repayment program that automatically deducts payments from borrowers’ paychecks, a model that has been used in other countries, such as Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Representative Tom Petri, a Wisconsin Republican, has introduced legislation to that effect.

And on Monday, several papers funded by the Lumina Foundation and discussed at an event here added to that debate.

Underlying nearly all of the papers was a consensus that the government’s existing array of income-based repayment programs — there are seven — need to be simplified and streamlined to make it easier for borrowers to enroll.

Brent Evans, a professor of higher education and public policy at Vanderbilt University, and his co-authors Angela Boatman, also of Vanderbilt, and Adela Soliz of Harvard University, sought to apply lessons of behavioral economics to the programs.

Evans said that the government should consolidate the programs into one since consumers tend to make suboptimal decisions when they are presented with too many choices.

Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access & Success, which helped develop the framework for the Obama administration’s expansion of income-based repayment, said her group had concluded that automatic enrollment in the programs would not be a good policy. However, she said, TICAS has proposed that the government place all federal borrowers who are six months delinquent on their loans — three months away from defaulting — in an income-driven plan.

“Income-driven repayment is not the optimal choice for everyone,” Asher said, noting that borrowers end up paying more in the longer term when their monthly payments are reduced.